Job Interests: I am currently interested in jobs in industry. I am mostly interested in locations on the East Coast.

BIOGRAPHYSarah Wodin-Schwartz is a fifth year Ph.D. graduate student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley studying MEMS design with Professor Albert P. Pisano. She received the Chancellors Fellowship her first two years in her graduate study and the Jane Lewis Fellowship in her fourth year. She graduated with her B.S. in general engineering from Smith College in 2007. Her interests include MEMS sensors for geothermal/harsh environment applications. She is currently a member of the Berkeley Mechanical Analysis and Design lab, a part of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center and is designing and testing MEMS for down-hole geothermal well monitoring.

HEaTS: Harsh Environment MEMS for Downhole Geothermal Monitoring [BPN564]The development of harsh environment sensor technology can aid in data logging and monitoring of geothermal reservoirs which are challenging to assess. State-of-the-art sensors based on silicon technology are limited to temperatures below 300oC and can not survive long exposure in geothermal conditions. As a result, new material platforms that utilize chemically inert, ceramic semiconductor materials are proposed for harsh environment applications. In the proposed work a temperature sensor that can withstand the harsh reservoir environment will be developed. The scope of the proposed research is to 1) perform experimental exposure testing of sensor materials in a small-scale pressure vessel at and around the critical point of water and geothermal brine and 2) develop a harsh environment temperature sensor that can operate in harsh supercritical conditions while maintaining high sensitivities. These tasks aid in the realization of advanced sensors for geothermal logging and monitoring. Ultimately, the harsh environment technology developed in this program can lead to improvements in geophysical models as well as increased reservoir lifetimes through direct monitoring.